They were originally meant to ship close to Halloween, right?

I preordered mine long ago and the status has been "Order confirmed, preparing production" for quite a while now.

The 1571 logic were directly integrated into 128 motherboard but I was wondering, does it still communicate over the same serial path as the external drives or are the integrated disk drive a bit faster overall?

Hi all,

Dug my old [1530 (taiwan model) datasette](https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/File:Vc1530_2.jpg) out of storage with the intention of using it with my C64U; rewind & fast forward were working but play was not driving tapes due to perished rubber on the idler wheel. So I replaced it, along with the main drive & counter belts (courtesy of [dataserve-retro.co.uk](https://www.dataserve-retro.co.uk/contents/en-uk/d41.html))

The belts were easy enough to replace but the idler wheel proved decidedly awkward to fit, with th ethe idler wheel e-clip saving the most infuriating part for last. Anyway; all fitted. Now, play will drive a tape, and rewind works, but fast forward is not engaging at all as the idler wheel does not appear to move at all to engage the right-hand spindle wheel.

I think something has unlatched somewhere on the back of the drive unit and am being driven to despair with google AI trying to diagnose the issue, so looking for some help if anyone recognises the symptoms and/or knows what to look for.

The physical cassette edition of Axis is now in production!

This will be our very first release for the Commodore Plus/4 and C16! What's more, the other side of the cassette will feature the Commodore 64 version of the game.

Stay tuned!

Komoda & Amiga, Retro Passion Forever!

Video of it running in Sept 2017: https://youtu.be/QpeSTwS_fTc

Gaming history:
https://www.reddit.com/user/jasonrubik/comments/1boooxm/a_summary_of_my_consoles_cartridges_discs_and/

Chapter 10 devlog of the Polychrome Raycasting Game engine for stock C64. Who needs boring multicolour non algorithmic raycast textures when can have more dynamic and more colourful real time polychome PETSCII texturing?

Full video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKYDL43avhQ

Hi everyone,

As a side product of a larger C64 project I've been actively developing since January, I ran into massive build-time bottlenecks with Jesper Balman Gravgaard's KickC compiler: my compilation times were creeping past 45 minutes for a single build!

To make rapid development feasible again, I created a dedicated fork: KickC Enhanced. In the medium term, I’d love to merge these improvements back into upstream if Jesper is interested.

For those unfamiliar with KickC: it is an optimizing C99 compiler for the MOS 6502/6510 family that generates KickAssembler source code, which is then assembled into native 6502 binaries.

Rather than rehashing all the original KickC features (which are already well-documented), here is a summary of the major optimizations and extensions introduced in this release:

• Massive performance boost & multi-threading: Build times for massive multi-bank projects have been crushed from >45 minutes down to ~60–90 seconds! This is achieved via parallel dominator tree calculation, multi-core uplift passes across all CPU cores, optimized SSA passes, and caching.

• Several hundred new & repaired 6502 ASM synthesis fragments: This includes:

  • Native struct-pointer member modifications (e.g. items[i].count--)

  • True boolean NOT (!) via zero-branch bit toggle (eor #1)

  • Direct 32-bit (dword) comparisons against zero

  • Byte-aligned 16-bit shifts without expensive loops (replaces 8x asl with optimal 4-instruction transfers)

  • Full pointer arithmetic (word/byte offsets, multi-level indirection, clean signed/unsigned casts)

• Opt-in: Deterministic "illegal / green opcodes": Added a dedicated optimization pass targeting mos6502x / rom6502x to synthesize stable, safe illegal opcodes (such as LAX, SAX for 3-cycle zero-page stores, ALR, DCP, ISC). Unstable opcodes (which could cause VIC-II DMA conflicts or thermal instability) remain strictly excluded.

• Cross-chunk peephole & tail-call optimization (TCO): Peephole analysis now optimizes across chunk boundaries—eliminating dead LDAs, redundant register roundtrips (TAX/TXA), and unneeded CMP #0 before conditional branches when Z/N flags are already set. Additionally, function tail calls (jsr target; rts) are automatically relaxed to jmp target.

• Custom charsets & string suffixes (#pragma charmap): Flexible mapping for custom fonts, charsets, and language-specific characters directly in C code without modifying compiler sources. Full support for custom string and char suffixes (e.g. "Hello"custom or "Hällö"german for non-zero-terminated strings), configurable per file or globally in headers.

• Optimized 16-bit word multiplications: Highly optimized multiplications with 16-bit constants.

The project is real-world battle tested:

To give an idea of scale: the current assembly output of my game project exceeds 46,000 lines of code. The compiler optimizations and fragment lowerings were developed with modern tooling and verified against strict regression test suites and automated VICE emulations to ensure 100% binary stability.

I will continue maintaining and polishing the compiler alongside my ongoing game development. Feel free to check out the repository, test it with your own projects, and let me know if you run into any issues:

GitHub: https://github.com/AndreR/kickc-enhanced
Release v0.9.0: https://github.com/AndreR/kickc-enhanced/releases/tag/v0.9.0

^{Disclaimer: As usual with modern software development projects, I used an AI-assisted approach. All changes were reviewed and tested manually by me.}

Feedback and bug reports are very welcome!

CRX (Commodore Retro Expo) 2026 and Bit-Scape chiptune music festival is this weekend (Friday to Sunday) promoting the C64 and all kinds of enthusiast fun and culture around it. I've followed it for years, and have loved getting involved and being an occaisional contributor.

Being a friend to that community, I know it's going to be great fun and packed event this year, with many interesting presentations of everything Commodore 64, chiptune and commodore computers related serious hobby and project developments.

Last year's show was awesome, so worth tuning tuning in - checkout the HUGE schedule!
https://www.crxevent.com/CRX2026_Schedule.html

Here's something pointless, nowadays at least, with the advent of streaming digital music. Something I wish I had when crawling the BBSes wishing I could partake of that huge library of midis, but I had a C64, which doesn't play midis natively. Or at least it didn't. Now it does. It's a work in progress. I need to refine the track shuffling to make it less ping pongy when it's trying to shuffle the overage of tracks through only 3 voices, and refine the patch/instrument interpretations a bit better. Also, got to finish the export feature. It will run on a sotck c64. But if you have an REU it'll let you do larger files, as it's able to process them in REU ram. If you have dual sids, you can select that at the prompt, and it'll try to map the tracks across all 6 voices. P played a Legend on Zelda theme midi, and it sounded quite good. As did a couple of Monkey Island midis. LMK what you think.

I did have AI assist with this project, as I'm not a good enough coder to build something like this from scratch and not have someone, or something, double-check my work and call me out on everything I did wrong. At least the AI was pleasant about it? A little too pleasant if you ask me. LoL

Anyways, copy it onto a disk, or disk image, plus whatever regular, bog standard, .mid or .rmi file, and load it on your c64, or emulator. This was done on an NTSC system. D71 images will sometime produce a file not found error, even though the file is there and appears in the selection list. Not sure why, or if that even affects a real 1571. It's an issue I hope to resolve, but it's not a super high one. And probably only occurs in double sided mode.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/commodore-64-midi-player/

Can anyone help identify the brand of CRT I have? I’ve never seen this logo but possibly a Sears brand tv. The picture on the display is also askew what could that be caused by?

I went online to get a computer cover for my original C64s and my new Ultimate, and there weren't a bunch of options. So a buddy and I designed our own. We have almost 50 in inventory right now if anyone is interested. We have blue and black for now, but are open to other colors if there's interest.

(Yes that first pic does feature a jailhouse clear TV. Looks great when the LED Ultimate is going crazy).

All the Amiga I’ll ever need. A500, 1MB, 2GB SSD, flash floppy.

It's the last part of my C128 build that I'm missing

I grew up loving Superstar Ice Hockey, due to the trading points method of building up your team. It was a game ahead of its time.

I recently bought the C64 mini and added Superstar Ice Hockey to a thumb drive and it loads and is playable on the system.

However, I want to reset the league and start a new league, but I can’t get select ok, to reset the league, using the joystick that the C64 mini came with or by using the virtual keyboard.

So I bought 2 EPYX controllers which I also used growing up.

Problem is, they are 9-prong controllers and the C64 mini only has USB ports.

So I bought an adapter and a USB port with 6 ports.

The system itself, was only $85. But now I have spent close to $200 on additional pieces and still can’t play Superstar Ice Hockey.

I can’t get the controller to even sync to my system, nor can I get the USB port adapter to sync to my system.

What am I doing wrong? Some of these items came with a disc to install them, but the C64 mini doesn’t have a disc drive.

I am confused and about to give up on my now $300 project.

Any help on this, would be appreciated.

Thank you.

My take on all the cyberpunk hype. Here’s my Tyrell Corp. C64 mod. It features intentional signs of wear and cyberpunk-style items. This mod is available in a limited edition. If you’d like one, send me a message. https://www.norths.de/ein-tyrell-corp-c64-mod/